A while back, I wrote about doing a phone interview on Skype, using a program called Audio Hijack Pro to record the conversation. It worked beautifully; the sound quality was much better than I've ever gotten with a cassette recorder, and very easy to transcribe. Before, I transcribed my cassette tapes using one of those foot-operated transcribers, and I'm telling you it was no fun at all. Audio Hijack makes it easy to set up your computer to record and then, later, to transcribe. So when I was preparing for Naples, I wanted to avoid that dreaded tape recorder (and transcriber) if at all possible. So I broke down and bought an XtremeMac MicroMemo so that I could use my iPod to record the interview.
On the plus side: the recording quality was great. The surprise was that, starting with a nearly fully charge, I found that I was running on a very slim red line of power after only about 1.5 hours. I hadn't anticipated that recording an interview would suck so much power. Fortunately, we were just finishing up, so I didn't miss anything.
After the interview, all I had to do was download the voice memo to iTunes. From there, it will be easy to transcribe using my headphones. So long, cassette tapes and transcriber!
2 comments:
Great to hear about the audio quality Sara! I was just in the mac store and there was a recorder by another company that also charged your ipod (of course I've forgotten the name) . . . But I love the little microphone that comes with the micromemo. I'm going to have to get the name on that new one too and see how it stacks up against this one. I actually thought about buying the micromemo (and am still considering it). Thanks for this! By the way, I think it's GREAT that you can record with an ipod -- the more things you can do with ipod the better!
Yeah, for my purposes the audio quality is more than adequate. But I've read positive reviews from people who require much higher audio quality--say, for recording podcast interviews.
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